FACTBOX-New Dan Brown story hits cinema screens

May 1 A movie based on "Angels & Demons" by
bestselling U.S. author Dan Brown will be released in cinemas
worldwide in mid-May, and again stars Tom Hanks as Professor
Robert Langdon.

Here are some key facts about the author:

-- "The Da Vinci Code" has sold more than 70 million copies
since its 2003 release and topped best-seller lists worldwide.
It also outraged the Vatican and some Catholics because of its
fictional story lines about conspiracy and the Catholic Church.

-- Tom Hanks played Langdon in the 2006 film of "The Da
Vinci Code," and it earned more than $750 million at the box
office worldwide despite the religious controversy and poor
reviews.

-- Dan Brown, born in June 1964, grew up in New Hampshire
and in 1986 he graduated from Amherst (Mass.) College. His first
novel, "Digital Fortress" (1998) centred on clandestine
organizations and code breaking and it became a model for his
later works.

-- His next novel was "Angels & Demons" (2000), where he
introduced Robert Langdon, a Harvard professor of symbology. The
movie adaptation has so far attracted less criticism from
Catholics, although the Rome archdiocese did decline its makers
the right to shoot in historic churches, forcing them to
recreate them in Los Angeles.

- After his third novel, "Deception Point" (2001), Brown
returned to Langdon with "The Da Vinci Code" which became one of
the fastest selling books of all time.

-- Brown and his publishers won a 2006 copyright
infringement case and a 2007 appeal against Michael Baigent and
Richard Leigh, two of the three authors of "The Holy Blood and
the Holy Grail" who claimed the novelist stole their ideas.

-- "The Lost Symbol", Brown's follow-up to the "The Da Vinci
Code", will be released in the United States, Britain and Canada
on Sept. 15, his publisher Random House said earlier this month.
Sources: Reuters/www.britannica.com
(Writing by David Cutler, London Editorial Reference Unit)

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